In the late 4th century, Armenia was divided between Rome and the Sasanians, who took control of the larger part of the Armenian Kingdom and in the mid-5th century abolished the Armenian monarchy. In the 6th and 7th centuries, Armenia once again became a battleground between the East Romans (Byzantines) and the Sasanians, until both powers were defeated and replaced by the Muslim Caliphate in the mid-7th century.
History
Following the fall of the Artaxiad dynasty after Pompey's campaign in Armenia in 66 BC, the Kingdom of Armenia was often contested between the Roman Empire and the Parthian Empire during the Roman–Parthian Wars. Throughout most of its history during this period, under the reign of the Arsacid Dynasty, the Armenian nobility was divided among Roman-loyalists, Parthian-loyalists or neutrals.
Armenia often served as a client state or vassal at the frontier of the two large empires and their successors, the Byzantine and Sassanid empires. During the Byzantine–Sasanian wars, Armenia was ultimately partitioned into Byzantine Armenia and Persian Armenia.
Struggle over influence with Parthia
With the eastwards expansion of the Roman Republic during the Mithridatic Wars, the Kingdom of Armenia, under the Artaxiad dynasty, was made a Roman protectorate by Pompey in 66/65 BC. For the next 100 years, Armenia remained under Roman influence. Towards the middle of the 1st century AD, the rising Parthian influence disputed Roman supremacy, which was re-established by the campaigns of Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo.
This conflict ended after the Battle of Rhandeia, in an effective stalemate and a formal compromise: a Parthian prince of the Arsacid line would henceforth sit on the Armenian throne, but his nomination had to be approved by the Roman emperor.
Roman province of Armenia (114–118 AD)
In 114, Emperor Trajan incorporated Armenia into the Empire, making it a full Roman province.
“From Antioch the emperor (Trajan) marched to the Euphrates and farther northward as far as the most northerly legion-camp Satala in Lesser Armenia, whence he advanced into Armenia and took the direction of Artaxata... Trajan was resolved to make this vassal-state a province, and a shift to eastern frontier of the (Roman) empire generally... Armenia yielded to its fate and became a Roman governorship... Trajan thereupon advanced and occupied Mesopotamia...and, like Armenia, Mesopotamia became a Roman province.”
In 113, Trajan invaded the Parthian Empire because he wanted to reinstate a vassal king in Armenia (a few years before fallen under Parthian control). In 114, Trajan from Antiochia in Syria marched on Armenia and conquered the capital Artaxata. Trajan then deposed the Armenian king Parthamasiris and ordered the annexation of Armenia to the Roman Empire as a new province.
The new province reached the shores of the Caspian Sea and bordered to the north with the Caucasian Iberia and Albania, two vassal states of Rome.
As a Roman province Armenia was administered along with Cappadocia by Catilius Severus of the gens Claudia.
The Roman Senate issued coins on this occasion bearing the following inscription: ARMENIA ET MESOPOTAMIA IN POTESTATEM P.R. REDACTAE, thus solidifying Armenia's position as the newest Roman province. A rebellion by the Parthian pretender Sanatruces was put down, though sporadic resistance continued and Vologases III of Parthia managed to secure an area of south-eastern Armenia just before Trajan's death in August 117.
Roman protectorate
After Trajan's death, his successor Hadrian decided not to maintain the province of Armenia. In 118, Hadrian gave Armenia up, and installed Parthamaspates as its king. Parthamaspates was soon defeated by the Parthians, and again fled to the Romans, who granted him the co-rule of Osroene in western Greater Armenia as a consolation.
Sohaemus was named king of Armenia by Roman emperor Antoninus Pius in 140. Just a few years later in 161, Armenia was lost again to Vologases IV of Parthia. In 163, a Roman counter-attack under Statius Priscus defeated the Parthians in Armenia and reinstalled Sohaemus as the Romans' favored candidate on the Armenian throne.
Armenia was in frequent dispute between the two empires and their candidates for the Armenian throne, a situation which lasted until the emergence of a new power, the Sasanians. Rome's power and influence increased over the years since, but Armenia retained its independence, even if only as a vassal state, although it was a Roman ally against the Sasanian Empire. When Roman emperor Septimius Severus sacked the Parthian capital of Ctesiphon, many Armenian soldiers were in his army. Later in the 4th century, they consisted of two Roman legions, the Legio I Armeniaca and the Legio II Armeniaca.
In the second half of the 3rd century, the Sassanid capital of Ctesiphon and areas of southern Armenia were sacked by the Romans under Emperor Carus, and all Armenia, after half a century of Persian rule, was ceded to Diocletian in 299 as a vassal territory.
Eastern Roman Armenia
In 363, a treaty was signed between the East Roman and Sassanid Persian empires, which divided Armenia between the two. The Persians retained the larger part of Armenia ("Persarmenia") while the Romans received a small part of Western Armenia.
Another treaty followed between 384 and 390, the Peace of Acilisene (usually dated c. 387), which established a definite line of division, running from a point just east of Karin (soon to be renamed Theodosiopolis) to another point southwest of Nisibis in Mesopotamia. The area under East Roman control thus increased, but still, about four fifths of the old Kingdom of Armenia remained under Persian rule.
Unlike Armenia Minor west of the Euphrates, which had been constituted into full provinces (Armenia I and Armenia II) under the Diocese of Pontus already in the time of Diocletian, the new territories retained a varying level of autonomy. Armenia Maior, the northern half, was constituted as a civitas stipendaria under a civil governor titled comes Armeniae, meaning that it retained internal autonomy, but was obliged to pay tribute and provide soldiers for the regular East Roman army.
Under Roman rule, Melitene was the base camp of Legio XII Fulminata. It was a major center in Armenia Minor (P'ok'r Hayk'), remaining so until the end of the 4th century. Emperor Theodosius I divided the region into two provinces: First Armenia (Hayk'), with its capital at Sebasteia (modern Sivas); and Second Armenia, with its capital at Melitene.
The Satrapies (Latin: Gentes) in the south on the other hand, which had been under Roman influence already since 298, were a group of six fully autonomous principalities allied to the Empire (civitates foederatae): Ingilene, Sophene, Antzitene, Asthianene, Sophanene and Balabitene. The local Armenian nakharar were fully sovereign in their territories, and were merely required to provide soldiers upon request and to dispatch a golden crown to the emperor, as a token of submission. In return, they received their royal insignia, including red shoes, from the emperor.
The situation remained unchanged for near a century, until a large-scale revolt by the satraps in 485 against Emperor Zeno (r. 474–491). In its aftermath, the satraps were stripped of their sovereignty and their rights of hereditary succession, being in effect reduced to the status of tax-paying and imperially-administered civitates stipendariae.
Emperor Justinian I (r. 527–565) carried out a series of comprehensive administrative reforms. Already soon after his accession in 527, the dux Armeniae (responsible for Armenia Minor) and the comes Armeniae were abolished, and the military forces of the Armenian territories were subordinated to a new magister militum per Armeniam at Theodosiopolis.
In 536, new reforms were enacted that abolished the autonomy of the trans-Euphrates territories and formed four new regular provinces. Armenia Interior was joined with parts of Pontus Polemoniacus and Armenia I to form a new province, Armenia I Magna, the old Armenia I and Armenia II were re-divided into Armenia II and Armenia III, and the old Satrapies formed the new Armenia IV province. In 538, the Armenian nobles rose up against heavy taxation, but were defeated and forced to find refuge in Persia.
Proto-Byzantine period
Around 535 / 536 provinces in which it was divided Armenia were reorganized by the Emperor Justinian. Justinian divided Armenia into four provinces:
Armenia I, governed by a proconsul. It included four cities of old Armenia I (Theodosiopoli, Satala, Nicopoli and Colonea) and two cities of old Polemoniac Pontus. The city of Leontopoli received the honor of being called by the name of the emperor and of being elevated to the rank of metropolis.
Armenia II, governed by a praeses. It corresponded roughly to old Armenia I, with some cities in the past belonging to Pontus.
Armenia III, governed by a comes Iustinianus with both civil and military powers. It corresponded roughly to old Armenia II and included, among others, the cities of Melitene and Arabisso.
Armenia IV, governed by a consular. It included the territories beyond the Euphrates and had been ruled before by native satraps. Its metropolis was Martiropoli.
Until then, the Armenians had lived according to their own laws and traditions, and were not obliged to respect the laws of Rome (Byzantium). Justinian with a series of edicts forced the Armenians to abide by the laws of the Empire. Justinian justified his decision by arguing that it was barbaric that according to Armenian laws women were excluded from the inheritance, and therefore established that, in accordance with Roman law, Armenian women could also inherit. According to some, however, Justinian forced the Armenians to obey Roman law not only because he wanted Roman laws to be applied throughout the Empire but also to shatter the large Armenian estates in several parts and thus weaken the Armenian nobles (according to Armenian law, unlike the Roman one,
In 537/539 a revolt broke out in Armenia, due to the discontent of the population towards the Byzantines, who had raised taxes and reduced the powers of the nakharar. The proximate cause of the revolt, however, was the assassination of Prince Hamazasp of Sper by a Byzantine proconsul. Sedition was repressed in blood and the leaders of the revolt executed or exiled.
In 565, Justinian I died and succeeded him to the throne Justin II (565–578). A year earlier the Sassanid governor of Armenia, of the Suren family, built a fire temple in Dvin near modern Yerevan, and had an influential member of the Mamikonian family killed, sparking a revolt that led to the massacre of the Persian governor and his guard in the 571, while the rebellion had also extended to Iberia. Justin II took advantage of the Armenian revolt to stop the annual tributes to the Sasanides of Cosroe I for the defense of the Caucasus. The Armenians were welcomed as allies, and an army was sent to Sassanid territory and besiegedNisibis in 573. However, the siege failed and the Persians counterattacked by besieging and taking Dara and devastating Syria. Justin II was forced to agree to pay annual tributes in exchange for a five-year truce on the Mesopotamian, although the war continued elsewhere. In 576 Cosroe I attacked Anatolia by plundering Sebasteia and Melitene, but the Sassanid offensive ended with a defeat. Taking advantage of the momentary Persian vulnerability, the Byzantines broke into Sassanid territory. Cosroe asked for peace, but decided to continue the war after a victory by his general Tamkhosrau in Armenia in 577 and the war also resumed in Mesopotamia. The Armenian revolt ended with a general amnesty and Armenia returned to Sassanid hands.
After Cosroe I died, Ormisda IV (579–590) ascended the throne. The war with the Byzantines continued until General Bahram Chobin, sidelined and humiliated by Ormisda, organized a revolt in 589. The following year Ormisda was killed and succeeded by his son Cosroe II (590–628), to the throne but the change of king failed to appease the wrath of Bahram, who defeated Chosroes, forcing him to take refuge in Byzantine territory, and ascending the throne as Bahram VI. With the help of troops provided to him by the Byzantine Emperor Maurice (582–602), Cosroe II managed to achieve a decisive victory over the Bahram army in Ganzak(591), thus managing to return to power. In exchange for Maurizio's help, Cosroe had to cede to the Byzantines all the territories occupied by the Persians during the war, Armenia and part of Iberia. Roman-eastern Armenia thus reached its maximum extent.
Following these conquests, Mauritius reorganized the Armenian provinces into four provinces:
Armenia I: corresponds to Justinian's Armenia III.
Armenia II: corresponds to Justinian's Armenia II.
Greater Armenia: corresponds to Justinian's Armenia I.
Armenia IV: districts of Sophene, Digisene, Anzitene, Orzianine, Muzuron.
Mesopotamia: corresponds to Justinian's Armenia IV with the addition of Arzanene.
Maurizio wrote this letter to Cosroe II, which had important consequences for Armenia:
"We have an ungovernable nation among us that fosters disorder. Let me collect Armenian leaders on my side and concentrate them in Thrace, and you collect Armenian leaders on your side and send them to the East to fight your enemies. If they kill, your enemies will have been destroyed; if the enemies kill, they will have destroyed our common threats. Then we could live in peace, because if they stay in their nation, we wouldn't have peace."
Chosroes agreed with this proposal, and all Armenian soldiers were transferred to foreign lands. This policy obviously generated discontent in Armenia and there were in fact riots led by Sahak Mamikonian and Sembat Bagratuni.
In 591, the treaty between Khosrow II and Maurice ceded most of Persarmenia to the Eastern Roman Empire.
Later history
The region was the focus of prolonged warfare in the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628. After the onset of the Muslim conquests and the Arab conquest of Armenia, only the western parts of Armenia remained in Byzantine hands, forming part of the theme of Armeniakon. Armenia remained dominated by the Arabs thereafter, and was ruled by a succession of Caliphate-appointed emirs as well as local princes.
The peace lasted just over a decade. In 602, in fact, the Roman army engaged in the Balkans to counter the invasions of Slavs and Avars, unhappy with Maurizio, turned to the imperial authority and, headed by the centurion Foca, took possession of the capital by appointing a new Emperor Foca; a few days later Maurizio and his family were killed. Cosroe II used the assassination of his benefactor as an excuse to start a new war against the Romans. In the early years of the war the Persians achieved unprecedented success. They were favored by the revolt of the Roman general Narsete against Foca and by the use by Cosroe of a pretender who claimed to be Theodosius, the son of Mauritius and the legitimate heir to the throne. In the following years the Persians gradually conquered the fortress cities of Mesopotamia one after the other. At the same time they inflicted a series of defeats on the Romans in Armenia by systematically subduing the Roman fortresses in the Caucasus. Phocas was killed in 610 by Heraclius, who came to power. Meanwhile the Persians completed their conquest of Mesopotamia and the Caucasus, and in the next ten years annexed Syria, Palestine, Egypt to their empire and devastated Anatolia. Meanwhile, the Avars and the Slavs took advantage of the situation to invade the Balkans, bringing the Roman Empire to the brink of collapse.
Heraclius attempted to rebuild his army and borrowed money from the Church to obtain the funds necessary to continue the war. In 622, Heraclius left Constantinople to form an army in Asia Minor and launch a new counter-offensive, which took on the characteristics of a Holy War. In 624 he invaded Armenia and put to flight a Persian army commanded by Cosroe in person at Ganzaca in Atropatene. Here he destroyed numerous Zoroastrian temples to avenge the looting of Jerusalem in 614 by the Persians. In 625 he defeated generals Shahrbaraz, Shahin and Shahraplakanalways in Armenia, and in the following years he obtained other victories. After a siege of Constantinople failed by Persians and Avars, Heraclius made an alliance with the Turks, who had taken advantage of the declining strength of the Persians to devastate their territories in the Caucasus. In late 627, Heraclius launched a winter offensive in Mesopotamia, where, despite the desertion of the Turkish contingent, he inflicted a decisive and overwhelming defeat on the Persians in the Battle of Nineveh. Humiliated by the series of defeats, Cosroe was killed in a conspiracy and was succeeded by his son Kavadh II, who signed a peace treaty with the Romans, agreeing to withdraw from all the occupied territories. Heraclius brought back the True Cross, deported to Persia by the Persians during the conquest of Jerusalem in 614, in the Holy City with a grandiose ceremony in 629.
Armenia was thus recovered by the Byzantines and then almost all lost again a few years later during the Arab invasions. Due to the reform of the Themes (designed by Heraclius or, alternatively, by one of his successors), the part of Armenia that remained Byzantine was reorganized in the new theme of Armeniakon. After seven centuries of history, the Roman province of Armenia was thus suppressed.
With the ebbing of the Caliphate's power and the fracturing of its outlying territories into autonomous statelets, the Byzantines were able to re-assert their influence over the Armenian principalities during the campaigns of John Kourkouas in the early 10th century. In the first half of the 11th century, under Basil II and his successors, most of Armenia came under direct Byzantine control, which lasted until the Battle of Manzikert in 1071, when all Armenia fell to the Seljuks.
Roman Christianity
The influence of Christianity was felt in the 1st century after Christ: Christianity was first introduced by the apostles Bartholomew and Jude Thaddeus. Thus both Saints are considered the patron saints of the Armenian Apostolic Church.
Apostle Bartholomew is said to have been executed in Albanopolis in Armenia. According to popular hagiography, the apostle was flayed alive and beheaded. According to other accounts he was crucified upside down (head downward) like St. Peter. He is said to have been martyred for having converted Polymius, the king of Armenia, to Christianity. Enraged by the monarch's conversion, and fearing a Roman backlash, king Polymius's brother, prince Astyages, ordered Bartholomew's torture and execution, which Bartholomew courageously endured. However, there are no records of any Armenian King of the Arsacid dynasty of Armenia with the name Polymius. Current scholarship indicates that Bartholomew more likely died in Kalyan in India, where there was an official named Polymius.
Armenia became the first country to establish Christianity as its state religion when, in an event traditionally dated to 301, Gregory the Illuminator convinced Tiridates III, the king of Armenia, to convert to Christianity.
As a consequence of Diocletian's victory over the Sassanids, all of Armenia was once again a vassal state of Rome by 299: Rome secured in this way a wide zone of cultural influence east of Anatolia, which led to a wide diffusion of Syriac Christianity from a center at Nisibis in the first decades of the 4th century, and to the eventual full Christianization of Armenia.
Before this, the dominant religion in Armenia was Zoroastrianism (promoted by the Parthian/Sassanid Empire) and to a smaller degree local Paganism. St Gregory and his son Aristaces were successful in the full Christianization of all Armenians in the first half of the 4th century, mainly after Roman emperor Constantine legalised Christianity in the Roman Empire in 313.
It is a well recognized historical fact that the Armenians were the first nation in the world to formally adhere to Christianity. This conversion was followed in the 4th and 5th centuries by a process of institutionalization and Armenization of Christianity in Armenia. Indeed, Gregory the Illuminator became the organizer of the Armenian Church hierarchy. From that time, the heads of the Armenian Church have been called Catholicos and still hold the same title.
St. Gregory chose as the site of the "Catholicosate" the capital city of Vagharshapat (actual Ejmiatsinin) in Armenia and built there the Etchmiadzin Cathedral as a vaulted basilica in 301-303 (Vahan Mamikonian, Roman governor of Armenia, in 480 ordered the dilapidated basilica to be replaced with a new cruciform church, still standing in the modern Armenia).
The continuous upheavals, which characterized the political scenes of Armenia in the next centuries, made the political power move to safer places often related to the Eastern Roman Empire. The Church center moved as well to different locations together with the political authority, ending in Byzantine Cilicia in the 13th century
Episcopal sees
Ancient episcopal sees of the Roman province of Armenia III listed in the Annuario Pontificio as titular sees:
Acilisene
Camachus
Citharizum
Theodosiopolis in Armenia
Defense and Army
We know that during the particular campaigns of Lucio Vero, after the occupation of the region (for which Lucio Vero and his brother Marco Aurelio obtained both titles of Armeniacus, respectively in 163 and 164), a strong Roman garrison was located in the new city of Kainepolis (today's Ečmiadzin 40 km north-east of Artaxata, the old Armenian capital).
Political and Economic Geography
The main cities were Arsamosata, Tigranocerta, Artaxata and Elegeia. Armenia is a predominantly desert region although the Caucasus chain is on the northern side. No vast rivers flow. The region is rich in plateaus where the Persians placed many of their camps and the Caspian gates, a sort of Persian limes. In Armenia there are no forests in fact precisely for this reason it was never exploited by the ancients and was neglected, the region took only a considerable importance for its wide desert spaces where Persian and then Sassanid cavalry became an unstoppable enemy.
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